Night School Records: Special Interest – The Passion Of​.​.​.

Special Interest - The Passion Of​

But would you bat an eye waiting for war machines to pass you by? But aren’t we going out tonight? Aren’t we going out?

Special Interest have returned with their sophomore LP. A dual release from Night School (EU) and Thrilling Living (US). The Passion Of… combines elements of glam rock and no wave pushed through a mangled filter of contemporary electronic forms. Special Interest present a precise and deranged vision of punk, an apocalyptic celebration, a step forward into a perverse and uncertain landscape.

LP / Digital Album

Posted on August 7th, 2020 under Releases, ,

Night School Records: R. Elizabeth – Every And All We Voyage On

R. Elizabeth – Every And All We Voyage On

R. Elizabeth is the recording name of London-based artist and academic Rachael Finney. Every And All We Voyage On is her solo recording project’s second full length and is a focused distillation of her practice in sound art and her knack for pop minimalism. It follows a long sold out release on Where To Now? Records and a prolonged period in which she concentrated on artist residencies exploring her interest in recorded sound and voice. Immediate and natural, Every And All We Voyage On manages to sound joyful while tackling complex themes, handling everything with an improvisatory touch. The songs are full of air and light; infectious, melodic and off-the-cuff.

LP / Digital Album

Posted on January 8th, 2020 under Releases, ,

Winona Records: Patience – Dizzy Spells

Patience - Dizzy Spells

Here’s the first full length album from Patience, a solo synthpop project from Los Angeles, California, released in collaboration with Winona Records and Night School Records.

LP / CD / Digital Album

Posted on August 7th, 2019 under Releases, , ,

Night School Records: Ela Orleans – Movies For Ears

Ela Orleans - Movies For Ears

Movies For Ears is a retrospective collection of works by Polish-born, Glasgow-based artist Ela Orleans which navigates almost two decades of songwriting in the heart of the global pop underground. This remastered collection casts an ear over what Orleans might call the ‘pop sensibility’ within her back catalogue. Released previously on a number of small DIY labels, Orleans’ music coincided with the explosion of auto-didactic musicians finding their voice in the age of the blogosphere, artists emboldened by the democratisation of music-making afforded by the internet. From the outset, Orleans’ childhood studying formal music mixed with cut-up techniques, sampling, sound-art and experimentation to create a distinctive signature cloaked in an innate melancholy and playfulness. Fully remastered by James Plotkin, featuring extensive sleeve-notes and rare photos from Orleans’ archive, Movies For Ears presents an appraisal of the musician’s work, painting a portrait of an artist with an uncanny ability to evoke emotions and ghosts of memories in the listener.

CD / Digital Album

Posted on May 13th, 2019 under Releases, ,

Night School Records: Molly Nilsson – History

Molly Nilsson - History

By the time Molly Nilsson released History, she had already established a fledgling cult status built on homemade YouTube videos and home-burnt Cdrs. Writing from a distance, it’s clear that History is the first classic album in her canon and arguably a classic of the 21st Century underground music panorama. While the methodology on History hadn’t changed from Nilsson’s previous 3 albums – it was recorded solo at The Lighthouse, Nilsson’s home studio based on a Berlin crossroads – on this record the songwriting reached a new peak and the emotional scythe cut deeper. Here, Nilsson managed to combine a cosmic, outward looking perspective with an intimate knowledge of the human condition and its place in these turbulent times. In truth, no other songwriter has excavated the modern psyche so clearly and perfectly.

The tracklist to Nilsson’s fourth album reads as an early greatest hits for Molly Nilsson followers and also serves as the perfect entry point to a whole world the artist has been building for the last 10 years. In Real Life crystalises the millenial obsession with relationships built online, with a generation paying for the baby boomer’s excesses with their anxiety towards the harshness of every day life. It’s a call to arms for a generation who fell in love on Skype. On I Hope You Die, one of Molly Nilsson’s most iconic songs, the songwriter flips the song title into a tale of doomed romance, a relationship based on miscommunications and the thrill of the other. It’s also one of the most heartfelt songs full of pathos written by anyone, an ode to obsession. Doomed romance, life lived on the flipside of day and the role of the outsider in society are themes that crop up through-out History. On Bottles Of Tomorrow, the narrator is sweeping up, in love with the night and examining the remains a society leaves behind.

On City Of Atlantis, Nilsson veers from the plaintive balladry she had begun to make her name with, embracing trance-like synth and dance music details to create an unlikely anthem using the mythological city as a means to comment on the patriarchal rendering of history by power. With by now trademark panache, she turns complicated subject matter into a glorious song that transforms into an ecstatic pop moment.

Hotel Home, another Nilsson classic, paints loneliness not as a debilitating anxiety, but as a powerful tool that propels the artist forward through her travels. It’s a song that hints at an endearing self-awareness also; the writer is never at home, living life on the road, content that “the world will find me when the time is ripe.”

LP / Digital Album

Posted on April 19th, 2019 under Releases, ,